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there is an interesting "fractal nature" of agriculture (by that i mean that the small form resembles the large form).

a tree will provide nectar to entice pollinators (including honeybees) to do it's pollination. the nectar is the bait.

a farmer (or big ag company) will entice the migratory beekeeper with $$$ in order to have bees moved into an area temporarily that:

1. doesn't/can't support a native pollinator population
2. requires (for the farmer) insect pollination
3. carries a measurable amount of risk to the beekeeper's bees (bees die in transit, bees are exposed to high levels of ag chemicals, bees are exposed to other bees in the vicinity).

the amount of money involved belies supply, demand, barriers to entry, and risk.

take a look at the situation with the almonds...the price being paid for pollination speaks of great risk (as there are enough bees and enough beekeepers to supply what is needed if the price is right). this is no different than any high risk/high return financial investment.

if there were good, reliable, predictable, and effective "treatments" for various problems aquired via doing almond pollination, the number of beekeepers willing to do the pollination would rise...and the price would fall.

i personally don't see a future in the migratory way of doing things for the long term. i think the more beekeepers we have like bud (non-migratory, largely self contained), the better shape we as a nation will be in when things do crash. what we need is a wide distribution of beekeepers who can expand locally once the migratory model fails.

i wish no ill will on those doing migratory, and i would do nothing to hasten or worsen their problems...i expect these things will take care of themselves.

Adee Honey Farms – one year later
Richard Adee of Adee Honey Farms owns the largest beekeeping operation in the U.S. He lost more than 40 percent of his bees that he trucked out to California in the fall of 2007 in preparation to pollinate the almond crop, which starts in early February.

Around Dec. 1, 2007, he said his bees were looking real “nice,” but Adee said things went downhill quickly from that point.

“All of a sudden they started collapsing through the rest of December and through most of January and early February, so it was a big hit,” he said. “We lost a lot of them before they started pollinating the almonds, so we had to scramble all over the U.S. to find bees to fill our contracts, which we were fortunate to do. That really takes a toll on a person.”

This year, Adee said they are planning to send about 65,000 hives to pollinate the almond crop. Beginning in October, his bees will be put on more than 150 truckloads out to Bakersfield, CA, where his son, Bret, runs the family operation there.

Adee said his focus right now is on keeping his bees as healthy as possible, which he hopes will help them build up more of a resistance than they had a year ago.

He knows some beekeepers who have been in the business a long time and who had to file for bankruptcy after last year’s bee collapse. He said one beekeeper he knows who lost most of his hives stacked up all of his equipment and burned it all in frustration.

“It’s really been devastating for us,” he said. “If there’s one good thing that’s come out of this, it is that there is a new awareness of the value of the honeybee in our food chain, but beekeepers sure have paid a high price.”

Bud
I agree with your last post .....believe it or not. I also try to raise most of my queens, do not use chumophus or apistan. I do go to almonds due to the drought here 3 of the past 4 yrs and no honey.... need money/. This past year I also did Cranberries in Wi. There are many causes of bee deaths. My 30 percent loss this year is due to queen failure/drone layers and one yard I missed a mitetreatment on. Most of dead outs had drone pattern or queen supercedure cells that failed to succeed. I think this goes back to mitecides residue in comb and also pesticides. Drought and nutrition can cause problems. But the 280 colonies I lost two yeas ago due to CCD (disappeared in 5 days) in my opinion were due to neonnictinoids.

Who knows what your neighbor uses. I am sure there were....(they are used in lawn care to crops) but in small amounts, they are used on potatoes in gardens and tobacco(admire) however bees dont get much nectar from tobacco as it is topped at early bloom and doesnt bloom long. I have however quit putting bees in south Florida where my losses were. There are alot of crops growing there and also alot of insecticide use due to citrus greening. I am in north Florida in a area with NO crops(just pine trees used for wood)along swamps with lots maple and willow. Bees look great since I moved here for buildup! Brood patterns and buildup is like 10-20 yrs ago! While I agree there is/was much damage done by miteicides especially chumophus, (I firmly believe that is a major cause our queen problems along with insecticides)our big cause of CCD is neonictinoids. THat said there are alot of other problems out there and I recognize that!

Drought and nutrition can cause problems. But the 280 colonies I lost two yeas ago due to CCD (disappeared in 5 days) in my opinion were due to neonnictinoids. -suttonbeeman

First off, my sympathies on your losses.

Now, having said that, and intending no offense, this accusation is your opinion, as you stated. Do you have any evidence that supports your belief?

What about the first two you mentioned, drought and nutrition? Two years ago, wasn't that area experiencing a drought? And did you make sure that your bees had varied floral sources to provide good nutrition?

I'd might be moving my bee's too in a situation like that, but if you had 2 years in a row in the same area with a high % of loss then I'd say the problem can be the local enviroment. I'm not saying you should of stayed there to see if it would happen again, not sure if I could of, but I'd have to say that I would never know if that was the problem unless I had stayed to see. When we seem to stumble on success with our management we try to duplicate it, so why don't we do the same thing with our failures to learn from them? I'm not a gluten for punishment, but I have to say I've learned from my problems because I've tried to see what the cause was. I've used Neonnictinoids on our farm with my bee here as well as other beekeepers having their bee's on our farm. And yes they know what we are using. At this point I plan on using them, but we are always trying alternatives.

Camp

As wonderful as this life is, there are days I really look forward to the next. :)

The argument posed in this thread is that neonicotinoids "cause" CCD, not whether or not pesticides are good or bad. That, to me, belongs in Tailgater.

So far, nothing has demonstrated that neonicotinoids cause CCD. And neonicotinoids seem dangerous because insects cannot detect them, which flies in the face of the symptom that CCD hives do not get robbed out for weeks after they fail.

The argument posed in this thread is that neonicotinoids "cause" CCD, not whether or not pesticides are good or bad. That, to me, belongs in Tailgater.

So far, nothing has demonstrated that neonicotinoids cause CCD. And neonicotinoids seem dangerous because insects cannot detect them, which flies in the face of the symptom that CCD hives do not get robbed out for weeks after they fail.

The mode of action of neonicotinoids is similar to the natural insecticide nicotine, which acts on the central nervous system. In insects, neonicatinoids cause paralysis which leads to death, often within a few hours.

bud writes:
Unless you are doing paid pollination, the chances of losing your bees to a pesticide kill is about 10,000:1

tecumseh:
humm... I don't know where you derived this number but it does sound a bit like it was snatched out of the air.

I would suspect (reflecting on past experience) that pesticide loss does to some degree depend on location and the general density (human or agriculture activity) of an area.

suttonbeeman writes:
I have however quit putting bees in south Florida where my losses were. There are alot of crops growing there and also alot of insecticide use due to citrus greening. I am in north Florida in a area with NO crops

tecumseh:
having spend a good deal of time in florida (a long long time ago) I am curious (cats being curious beast) where (general location beyond some non descriptive north/south designation) exactly this loss occurred.

and just as a point of information much of the south end of florida is a bit like a huge expansive waste treatment plant and the waste component in the water does not necessarily have to originate anywhere near florida since the water that permeates much of the area may have an origin a thousand miles away.

The mode of action of neonicotinoids is similar to the natural insecticide nicotine, which acts on the central nervous system. In insects, neonicatinoids cause paralysis which leads to death, often within a few hours.

Bees are insects right ? -beenovice

Right. So why would symptoms appear in bees (one type of insect) weeks or even months after exposure to neonicotinoids, but appear in other types of insects very shortly after exposure (hours to days)?

Right. So why would symptoms appear in bees (one type of insect) weeks or even months after exposure to neonicotinoids, but appear in other types of insects very shortly after exposure (hours to days)?

Bees poisoned by nenocotinoids quickly die. You can see pile of bees in front of the hives. It happened this year all over Europe. A lot of us saw it in real time !

Let's not fool ourselves anymore. CCD, what not....it just does not matter.
The fact is we are poisoning ourselves with huge amount of pesticides ( including ones we put into our hives ! ). Higher rates of cancers are visible in rural areas these days. Water is more polluted in the areas where few people live but pesticides are in use than in cities ( it seems impossible but that is the way it is ).

There is a lot written by some pretty credible people how pesticides damage insects immune systems even in long run and not just immediate kill. Even Bayer itself claims some pesticides are dangerous to bees by only visiting a plant and by gathering nectar and pollen on these plants. While it does not kill adult bees it is dangerous and damages larvae ! So at the end we have pretty "damaged" adult bees.

While it does not kill adult bees it is dangerous and damages larvae ! -beenovice

So why does CCD only show up at specific times of the year, rather than throughout the year or when neonicotinoids are being used most heavily?

And why didn't this appear in 2000? Or 2001? Why only in 2006 and 2007 (and maybe 2008?)?

And why single out specific groups of pesticides or even specific pesticides?

My suspicion is still that CCD is "caused" by a number of variables, and I suspect that prominent among the variables might be stress from moving and crowding and manipulating bees to fit artificial production systems, and nutrition from lack of diversity in forage.

So why does CCD only show up at specific times of the year, rather than throughout the year or when neonicotinoids are being used most heavily?

.

This is what I'm wondering as well. I can see neonicotinoids causing kills if used at the wrong time or without consiceration to polinators. But if I used neonicotinoids and didn't get the control I wanted, I sure wouldn't be using it.

Camp

As wonderful as this life is, there are days I really look forward to the next. :)